Conway and Mehta contributed $50,000 each for a chance to cozy up to the newly elected mayor. Coming, as it does, on the heels of Lurie’s appointment of yet a third tech billionaire, OpenAI chief Sam Altman, as co-chair of his transition team, the news is worrying. Elected,
Biden’s comments, a bit late and more than a dollar short, were a clear shot at billionaire Elon Musk and the tech barons now surrounding President Donald Trump. Simply being extremely wealthy does not an oligarch make; undue influence does. Musk is a classic example, acting on Trump’s
The message was brief, even by the standards of Twitter/X. “I am stepping back from GrowSF,” Tweeted Garry Tan, San Francisco centi-millionaire and political provocateur. “I’m spending more time on startups and AI and in DC this year.” With that, Tan announced his exit from city politics after
Tech billionaire Michael Moritz’s media outlet, The San Francisco Standard, has frequently called Neighbors for a Better San Francisco, the Astroturf Network’s leading spender, the city’s “most powerful” political group. After the November 2024 election, that title rightly belongs to organized labor, particularly the Labor Council’s
The Astroturf Network’s only major success this cycle was the ouster of District 5’s Dean Preston, the most progressive member of the Board of Supervisors. Preston’s loss in the November 2024 election can serve as a case study for how the Network uses its almost unlimited financial
The Astroturf Network spent $12 million on San Francisco’s November 2024 election. It’s a staggering sum for a city with about a half-million registered voters, but a trifling amount for a cabal that includes a handful of billionaires. The Network wanted nothing less than a top-to-bottom takeover of
As much of San Francisco mourns Donald Trump’s victory, San Francisco progressives can take some solace in local election results. After recent setbacks, the movement tallied up some impressive wins against candidates and ballot measures lavishly funded by the Astroturf Network. Former District 2 Supervisor Mark Farrell, backed by
The Astroturf Network’s involvement in the city’s mayoral race has attracted the most headlines leading up to the November 2024 election. For good reason: More than $28 million has been raised, to date, on the battle for San Francisco’s top job, with two candidates — Mayor London Breed,
All eyes are on San Francisco this electoral season, with dark money groups pouring millions of dollars into candidates they believe can remake the city to serve their kleptocratic interests. Beyond a contentious mayoral race, key supervisor races have just as much, if not more, power to shape San Francisco’
Election season is here and with it a pile of mailers, delivered to online and physical mailboxes throughout San Francisco. Among them are “slate cards,” the list of candidates and ballot measures endorsed by a variety of organizations, some with deep roots in the community and others with the most
Eddie Kim covers San Francisco politics for the Gazetteer www.gazetteer.com, an online publication launched last spring with the aim of covering stories ignored by other media outlets. The Phoenix Project recently spoke with Kim about Reboot 2024: The New Reality, held September 4th and 5th at San Francisco’
La Mediterranee has been a Pacific Heights institution serving authentic Middle Eastern fare to those in the neighborhood and beyond for nearly a half century. Now, the restaurant is in danger of disappearing after Neil Mehta, a billionaire technology investor, went on a buying spree earlier this year, spending $40